“A Psychedelic Pioneer Takes the Ultimate Trip”

A Tucson friend just sent me this excellent article,   A Psychedelic Pioneer Takes the Ultimate Trip,  about Dr Roland Griffiths, who is a  pioneer  “in investigating the ways in which psychedelics can help treat depression, addiction and, in patients with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, psychological distress.”  

Well worth reading if you have about 9 minutes.

My nine years working as an addictions counselor had followed nearly nine years of smoking far too much marijuana in my restaurant career.  Let me explain.   Before going to graduate school to get an M.A. in Counseling-Psychology I did what I considered extensive field work in the field of recreational drug use while earning a BA in English.  With my group of rebellious friends at Calvin College I drank, ingested, smoked and snorted numerous drugs of often-questionable origin. How could we not?  What was there to lose? We were totally depraved. We sought unlimited atonement for our sins as well as those sins of our fathers that we well knew were visited upon us. Hell, yes! We realized that all we did and were to yet do was predestined. Hence, turning our collective back on it would have reeked of entitlement and spitting on our religion, the one true one. There was no way that we would ever risk the sin of believing that our works would help to gain us heaven. We all knew that Martin Luther was wrong. We had been taught relentlessly that worshiping the Virgin Mary was far worse. Holy shite. What a load of mythical crap we were fed.  Still it was our myth and our legacy and now at college we worked hard at suppressing it from our frontal lobes. In hindsight, I now know that my afternoon and late night and early morning drug experimentation was simply field work for my advanced degree in counseling.  “Hello, sure I’ll be your therapist.”

Dead serious here. Of all the drugs I did the psychedelics were hands down the most interesting and meaningful for me. Out of my drug-addled adolescence I learned that psychedelics opened a door for me. Those recreational trips were eye-opening and built awareness in me.

So when Pammy was actively dying my mind took off racing. When she got her diagnosis Pammy told me that she knew she did not have long. Pammy was an oncology and hospice nurse for most of her career. She knew what lay in store for her. I knew. I sought out and bought a half ounce of psilocybin mushrooms. From my years of reading and from some experience with patients in therapy who told me their tales, I truly believed that this drug might really help Pammy who was facing end of life questions and existential angst. I asked Pammy if she wanted to try mushrooms to see if they could help her. Pammy refused the drug just as she’d refused it years before when I suggested that it might help with her depression and addiction. Pammy had always been fearful that any psychedelic might push her beyond the edge and result in psychosis. Her history of therapy was lengthy, her success fleeting and mottled.  I do know that Pammy was an extremely intelligent woman, an insanely kind person, a wonderful nurse advocate for her patients and an attentive mother when she was doing well. That was most of the time. Pammy grew up though with a mother who never dealt with her own depression. It seemed to me that her mom projected her depression onto her children and husband with her striking out in anger, her unobtainable rules and pervasive shame. Her mom spent much time and energy keeping up outward appearances of good health and beauty and conformity. Pammy suffered from anorexia when young. I believe that Pammy drank to hide from the shame she felt. Pammy’s feelings and thoughts about her mom, herself and her place in her family were an obstacle for her throughout her life. In addition, Pammy felt badly because her father failed to come to her aid when assailed by her mother. Pammy never believed herself to be worthy. It was not a lot different than my use of too much food and drugs to deal with my feelings of inadequacies and shame.  Pammy was a Calvinist boy’s dream.

Pammy chose to not use the mushrooms. I did not coerce. I did not encourage her further. I only mentioned it the once. I did not do or say all the things I often did during earlier days of marriage. Finally, I now understood that I did not know what was best for Pammy. I was not her counselor. She had told me exactly that many times. Pammy was dying. I only held onto the mushrooms should she change her mind.

Pammy was living her last months.  Pammy had time with me to say goodbye. Pammy had time with her girls and granddaughters and her dogs. Pammy got to say goodbye to her best friends and her brothers. Then almost exactly 8 months after her diagnosis Pammy died.

It became my turn to face my end of life questions and angst. 

I’ve spent many hours traipsing through these woods. I loved this glen not far from our cottage by our Lake Michigan dune. I had quit smoking pot quite a few years before. I did not like to feel out of control. I did not like the constant ruminations while high. I enjoyed the thoughts flowing in my head but I did not desire ramping them up. My psyche can become disorganized.

However, some of the pot's benefits I missed. So I learned how to make a tincture of cannabis in alcohol and with the ground marijuana I grew. I eventually became proficient at creating hard candy from it and I ate it once or twice per week. I generally ate it when I walked in the woods. It has had several benefits for me. The sugar which gave me a small, immediate surge of energy also aided in helping the THC/CBD cross my blood-brain barrier. I never got very high because I ate very little of it. However, my dosage was sufficient to get me very mildly high. The CBD, I imagine, helped me with the pains that I once felt when hiking or immediately thereafter. I have actually gotten quite proficient at adding the alcohol tincture at about the right temperature so that most of the THC is burned off and the CBD remains. I like my life running at about 80-90 percent speed about 80-90 percent of the time. It works for me. 

After Pammy died I went into overdrive though. I went through every belonging in the house. I listened to the soundtrack of our lives, every CD in our cottage. I decided to sell our cottage. I was manic and in a driven state.  I was bingeing possessions to help me remember while purging them in order to forget. The first six months after Pammy died were a wild emotional ride.  I thought occasionally about using the mushrooms but I knew I was not ready. Finally, when I had thought and worried enough I made plans to travel. I now believed that being alone was a gift not to be wasted. It seemed to me a golden opportunity to live some of my best years possible. And, yet the guilt that I was steeped in as a child kept fighting its way into my psyche. So after thinking long about all of it and contemplating my life gone by, I made some decisions and I was firm about them. Then I decided to eat the mushrooms. 

I set up my day so I would ingest them. I knew they would take about an hour to kick in so I  cleaned the house until they took effect. Pammy taught me to never leave on a trip without cleaning the house thoroughly.  I took her advice.  Like clockwork an hour later I felt the mushrooms taking hold of me.  I sat down and leaned into my comfortable chair in my living room and started listening to Philip Glass’ Aguas da Amazonia.  I was gazing at the cottonwood tree’s  leaves across our lawn,  some still on the tree shimmering in the fall light.  My chair faced that window as well as  an impressionistic, arboreal painting I had just purchased. I had sought out a favorite artist and bought this large piece of art to  mark this crossing over into my new life.  

The effect was soothing, startling and revelatory. What I was doing and how I was handling my life was in harmony. My decisions fit perfectly into my future and my past. I was at peace with my decision from that point forward. However, I do not want to convey too much ebullience about this outcome.  Many months later on the Oregon coast I did shrooms again and the result was tumultuous. The cacophony I heard and felt was palpable. I experienced synesthesia both times but this second experience was not harmonious. It was revelatory and still important but not an enjoyably good trip like the first one in our cottage. In Michigan I was in my living room of our house which I was selling and leaving to travel. In the woods of that coastal forest in Oregon I was alone. I learned a few things about the life I was now creating. In Oregon I learned more about my loneliness and my limits to quell it alone. 

One very good feature about mushrooms and other psychedelic drugs is that they are self-limiting.  After you have used them there is not any compelling urge to quickly use them again. They have created a space for you to learn and grow but they do not call out for you to use them again. They are not addictive.

So I do find the article I linked at the beginning of this post intriguing. I hope you will too. Dr Roland Griffiths explains it much better than I do. He recounts how they have helped him and what psilocybin mushrooms may possibly do for your life. My advice is the same I have offered friends and family who have asked about mushrooms. See a therapist. Do it carefully. Have a guide. Even knowing that they appear to be more effective than medication and therapy, you should still take extremely good care of yourself in a safe environment. 

A few excerpts from the interview follow:

“I have a long-term meditation practice…..(but) what I recognized is that the best way to be with this diagnosis (of terminal cancer) was to practice gratitude for the preciousness of our lives.”

“My life has never been better! If I had a regret, it’s that I didn’t wake up as much as I have without a cancer diagnosis. It’s been incredible. There have been so many positive things: my relationship with my children, my grandchildren, my siblings, my wife…”

“.....I don’t believe in God as conceptualized within different religious traditions, but the mystery thing is something that strikes me as undeniable.”

“I want everyone to appreciate the joy and wonder of every single moment of their lives. We should be astonished that we are here when we look around at the exquisite wonder and beauty of everything. I think everyone has a sense of that already. It’s leaning into that more fully. There is a reason every day to celebrate that we’re alive, that we have another day to explore whatever this gift is of being conscious, of being aware, of being aware that we are aware. That’s the deep mystery that I keep talking about. That’s to be celebrated!”

People have told me that I get too side-tracked by diversity, too many people and places and ideas. Maybe that is my track. Regardless, I enjoy being with friends and future friends. I love to hike and go to concerts with them. We just talk and talk and listen and share. It is not a bad thing. Small doses of me are good for others, I believe. Too much, more than likely not so good. I’m certainly a self-limiting drug, a non-addictive entity. One dose will last you a good, long while.